


The Sun King

by newsbypostcard (orphan_account)



Category: Party Down
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 22:17:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5472590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/newsbypostcard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post series finale: Roman, upon sobering up, has to face up to the fact that, while high beyond belief, he has apparently written an entire screenplay for a movie that might actually show promise... apart from the fact that it also apparently stars Kyle.</p><p>
  <em>“Yeah, don’t you remember? You were standing at the bar getting steadily fucked up, and you looked at me and said, ‘Kyle, take off your sun helmet.’" Kyle tosses a bar peanut into his mouth, leaning against the counter with some crooked grin. "I’m totally the Sun King.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I'm fairly certain you're not the Sun King," Roman says, trying to save face.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Okay, bro. You haven’t even read it, but sure. Your movie. The protag is totally not me. No problem.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The thing is ... that Kyle absolutely fucking is the Sun King.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sun King

**Author's Note:**

  * For [youjik33](https://archiveofourown.org/users/youjik33/gifts).



> For Yuletide. Prompt was -- "I'd love to see [Kyle and Roman] in a situation where they team up and work together for some reason. Maybe it has to do with Roman's script from the last episode..." with a noted enjoyment of pining and angst.

* * *

  


When Roman re-emerges back into the real world, the first face he sees is Kyle’s.

Because _of course it fucking is._

Roman had at some point, by some miracle, fallen asleep - that element he remembers. He also remembers getting to work, eating a few cookies, and then a glimpse of paramedics, and -

Kyle’s idiotic face grinning at him with two thumbs up, for some fucking reason.

Then he remembers realizing he was in a medical institution of some kind, not being very happy about that, hissing at great volume, and eventually curling up into a ball, believing that if he were to make himself small enough, the petty nurses who had crowded around him in what he could only assume was blatant schadenfreude would disappear into wisps of smoke or some shit.

And then he’d fallen asleep instead, and now he was here, and so was Kyle, and Kyle is holding a roll of toilet paper in the air with this smile on his face that’s like … whatever.

“Hey,” Kyle says. His voice is weirdly gentle, some twinkle in his eye. “Are you back, or are you still in your tuuube?”

Roman only appraises Kyle, seated by his side as he is. Why the fuck is he here? Why is he still wearing his work outfit? What time is it?

“What the fuck is that,” is the only thing he says aloud. He is disgusted with himself, and Kyle, and the whole goddamn situation.

Kyle’s mouth quirks to one side as he holds the roll of toilet paper aloft. “This, DeBeers, is your fucking so-called ‘ _masterpiece_ ’.”

What is that stupid -- look on his face?

“Shut up,” says Roman, lacking other options for recourse.

“I’m serious. You were so fucking high.” Kyle is laughing, now, assessing whatever’s written on the toilet paper with something approaching intelligent appraisal. “Hey, do you feel strongly about the title ‘The Serpent in the Mirror’? Because that would make a good album title. It seems a little heavy-handed for a movie, you know, it might put people off, like, _whoa_ , you know, like, _why would a serpent need to look in the mirror, is that what we’re gonna watch, sounds kinda weird, I don’t wanna pay money for that,_ right? So if you’re not that attached, I _thought_ I might use it for--”

“Shut _up_ ,” Roman hisses again. His fists clench in the blankets. This all sounds terribly, horrifyingly familiar, but he is extremely fucking sure he doesn’t _want_ to remember it. “I have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“You’re joking, right? Do you know why you’re here?” Kyle shakes his head. “It was incredible to watch, man. You were like a baby seeing the world for the first time, or something.”

Roman suddenly also remembers being dead, on a toilet, and staring into … a purple … tube.

“And then I wrote -- that.”

“Yup.” Kyle waves the roll of toilet paper in the air. “Your space opera, or whatever.”

Roman stares at Kyle like he’s stupid, which he is. “I severely doubt it’s a space _opera_ ,” he corrects.

“Whatever! It’s got space and like, I dunno, it’s epic. And not bad, if the first few sheets are anything to go by.”

Kyle unrolls the toilet paper and looks down at it as though to study the words scrawled on it in what is _definitely_ Roman’s handwriting. He may not remember writing it, but -- try as he fucking might -- he definitely remembers the experience that informed it.

And that experience? Complete fucking nonsense. Ravings. Nothing _legitimately_ creative about any of it.

Now here it is, being held by a shit human, on a roll of shit catcher, in this shit hospital room.

To call _this_ his masterpiece? Fucking kill him first.

“Chuck it,” says Roman.

Kyle stares. “You’re joking.”

Roman shrugs. “Drug-fueled bullshit. Do you think that Heinlein wrote _Stranger in a Strange Land_ when he was balls high?”

“I dunno, he might’ve.”

Roman looks at Kyle, hoping to god it’s clear by his expression just how stupid Kyle sounds. “Listen. So-called ‘post-modern’ frou-frou bullshit is one thing, but I’m a writer of _science fiction._ Just throw it out, man. It’s garbage.”

“Are you serious?” Kyle frowns at him. He’s actually not making fun of Roman, for once. The sincerity of his attention is … weird. “I thought you would’ve wanted this. I mean yeah, you were high - like, _really high_ , man, that shit was amazing to watch - but the ideas were still _yours_ you know what I mean? Like this is a really Roman thing to write. It blows my mind to think that even when you’re that fucked up, you’re still like this dumbass intellectual...”

“ _Dumbass intellectual?_ ” Finally, thank _Christ_ , something Roman can jump on. “Do you even hear yourself when you talk? Do you bother to think through any goddamn thing you’re about to say?”

“I just mean that it’s not .... it doesn’t read like you were balls high, like, at all. Just-” He puts the roll on the table at Roman’s side. “Read it. Then do whatever you want with it, I guess, but I think it’s worth thinking about, you know?”

Kyle stares. His lips do this pouty thing as he thinks-

_Is he thinking?_

_*Pouty thing?*_

He needs to end this conversation as soon as fucking possible.

Roman looks away. “Get out,” he says, monotone.

“What? What’d I say?”

“Get. Out. I didn’t fucking ask you to be here.”

Why _had_ Kyle come, exactly?

Roman doesn’t ask. He does, however, throw the roll of toilet paper after Kyle when he gets up to leave with a frustrated sigh. “And take this the fuck with you,” he bites. 

He’s pissed at Kyle for bringing him this, like he’d have any interest in anything he could’ve written in such a fucked-up state, and Kyle has the indecency to look indignant at Roman’s reaction. 

“Dude, come on. Seriously?” Kyle catches the toilet paper awkwardly against his chest, one elbow high in the air. The cotton of his shirt is taut against his skin. “You don’t even want to read it _once_?”

“No.”

“Look, not to expasterbate the point-”

“ _Expasterbate?_ Are you _kidding me_?”

“-but why the hell not?”

Roman shakes his head. He feels disgust edging into his features. “Because it’s not fucking - _mine_ , or whatever. Look, it doesn’t matter. I don’t care what you do with it. Burn it, use it to wipe your ass, who gives a shit. Just don’t leave it here.”

“You won’t even - look, I’ll read it to you.”

“I don’t _want you_ to read it to me!” Roman would force him bodily out of the room if he felt remotely confident in the integrity of his legs. “Just get the fuck out!”

Kyle looks at him with some piercing fucking look that Roman can’t get a grip on, and Roman breathes at him, hands gripping at the blankets all the while.

“Okay, bro,” Kyle says eventually; and then, at last, he leaves Roman the fuck alone.

  


  


Kyle ambushes him with the toilet paper again, now disgustingly unraveled, two weeks later.

Roman didn’t expect to see it again. He’s given it no thought at all - or so he tells himself. He’s fucking avoided mirrors with his dedication to forgetting, and that should be enough. It’s been a tough couple weeks trying to properly flatten the curtains of his hair without a reflection, but he’s nothing if not committed.

But now here it fucking is again. Kyle’s talking to him, but Roman just looks at the bunched paper in his hands, anger or disappointment or whatever pounding in his ears. Some time later, something Kyle actually said sinks in.

“Good?” Roman looks up, suddenly. “You thought it was good?”

“Really good.” Kyle looks sincere; he’s actually not fucking with him. “I’m serious. You should look into getting it produced.”

Roman looks from Kyle to the toilet paper and back up to Kyle. There’s gotta be some extended metaphor going on with the fact that his ‘masterpiece’ is written on literal unraveled toilet paper, but he’s too preoccupied to think about that right now.

“You think?” he said. His voice sounds small. He feels small. If he wanted to dig deep into the moment, he’d probably figure out that he’s never received complimentary feedback on his writing before. As it is, he mostly just feels pissed for being reduced, again, by this thing he _allegedly_ wrote while stoned beyond belief, that cannot possibly have any artistic merit and yet is receiving actual praise from someone he actually kind of… doesn’t _totally_ hate, anyway.

“Yeah, man,” says Kyle. “Listen. I know you probably don’t want any help, but if you _did_ , I could help you get it together.”

This, finally, rouses Roman from his indulgent daze. ‘What? What could you _possibly do_ to--”

“I’ve got friends. Actor friends. They could, you know, extra in as dead bodies, or reflections, or whatever.”

Roman looks from Kyle to the loose sheets of toilet paper again. “Maybe.”

“Look, I think it’s good, but you’re gonna have a hard time getting it off the ground without hype. Me? I can generate hype. That’s all I’m saying. Put some of my friends in it, they’ll do your promo for you.”

“I don’t want it to be some mainstream--” He cuts himself off, remembering that he is _not_ entertaining this idea. “Shut up. I’m throwing it out.”

“Dude, _don’t_.” Kyle physically prevents him from moving toward the can. “Just don’t, okay? Read it one time. I promise, you won’t hate it. I mean, _you wrote it_ , how fucking bad could it be?”

Roman blinks at Kyle. “Is that a serious question?”

“Don’t let the drugs deter you. People are creative as hell when they’re high. Trust yourself. Trust _me_.”

Roman does not, in fact, trust Kyle, but he does somehow feel faintly reassured. “Fine. I’ll read it _once_.” Roman frowns and tries, with extreme difficulty, to wrap his ‘masterpiece’ around one arm without ripping it. “And _maybe_ , I guess, I’ll think about putting you in it, but-”

“It’s already got me in it.”

Roman blinks at him, pausing in place with the toilet paper mid-wrap around his arm. “What.”

“The Sun King? You don’t you remember? You were standing at the bar getting steadily fucked up, and you looked at me and said, ‘Kyle, take off your sun helmet.’” Kyle tosses a bar peanut into his mouth, leaning against the counter with some crooked grin. “I’m totally the Sun King.”

Roman’s throat goes suddenly parched. “I’m fairly fucking certain you’re not the Sun King,” he says, trying to save face.

“Okay, bro. You haven’t even read it, but sure. Your movie. The protag is totally not me. No problem.” And Kyle saunters away, shoving his hands in his pockets and whistling badly, his mouth too full of peanut to really make a sound.

  


  


The thing is… that Kyle absolutely fucking is the Sun King.

The _other_ , possibly even _more_ surprising revelation is that - he also wasn’t wrong about the screenplay. It really is passable. It’s in dire need of some edits and a serious revision of the bizarre Tron homage involving tubes and snake races, but for the most part, it holds together.

Roman calls in sick to work and spends the next night typing it up, throwing the by now filthy and ripping toilet paper masterpiece into the trash at last with cathartic flourish.

Then he calls Kyle.

“I’m not saying you are,” Roman says, before Kyle can even get out a proper greeting, “but if you _were_ the Sun King-”

“Ha!” says Kyle on the other end of the line. “Is that where you were tonight? I kind of assumed you’d offed yourself, having realized the sad reality of your life.”

“Stop talking,” Roman says lazily. There’s no venom in it; it comes out of his mouth so easily these days. It’s like a second greeting. “It’s not good _yet_ , but I cede your point that it has promise.”

“Nice,” Kyle says. If Roman had to guess, he’d think Kyle was shifting from where he’d thrown himself down on the bed, having stripped down to his boxers after work, and - _stop thinking about this Roman what the fuck is wrong with you._ “I know you don’t want mainstream appeal, but I do think that once people get to the ending, their minds will be _blown_ , you know? Then they’ll start talking about it....”

“Yeah,” Roman says. He never in his life thought Kyle would have anything remotely insightful to say, but the thought of more people actually _getting_ a film like this has appeal to him, if he can get it off the ground. “Yeah, people _will_ talk about it. It’s a total twist ending. Like _Man in the High Castle_ good.”

“Uh... I’ll take your word for that one. So, what do you want from me? Can I be the Sun King?”

“I don’t know yet.” Roman still has to come to grips with the fact that this really fucking happened; that he really fucking wrote a movie that stars fucking Kyle Bradway, of all goddamned people. “But I … guess I could entertain your vision for the character. I’ve got some ideas about where to place the story in space and time, and I thought maybe if you understood that better…”

“Sure, man, I get you. You’re the creative. So you wanna meet up and talk about it?” Kyle is inexplicably eating, as always, even while he’s on the fucking phone. “I got nothing going on during the day tomorrow.”

“Fine,” Roman says. “Come over.”

Holy shit. _Come over?_

“Fine,” Kyle repeats, mocking Roman openly. “I’ll be there after lunch.”

And then Kyle hangs up, and Roman puts his hands over his face and wonders, for what’s probably the thousandth goddamn time in the last two weeks alone, what the hell his life is turning into.

  


  


Roman convinces himself in the sixteen hours that follow that Kyle has no fucking idea what the role requires.

Of course the role wasn’t written for _Kyle_. Kyle wouldn’t know the first goddamn thing about what the Sun King is meant to represent. The whole thing reeks of irony - the rule of the colony was entirely contingent on the tight fist of control, and the bright-eyed enthusiasm of a dictator is brightest before the slaughter. Kyle couldn’t pull off that sort of genius duality if he went in for a frontal lobotomy and came out Jekyll and Hyde. Roman’s off the hook. There’s nothing about this situation that’s indicative of anything at all that he could possibly need to face up to, at all.

“So, like,” Kyle says when he sits down on Roman’s collapsing sofa after barely a greeting, “I’m really glad you came around, because I’m really excited about the potential of this role. I mean, the King’s duality alone is just so critical to the plot’s central message, you know?”

Roman blinks, arms crossed in front of his chest, staring at Kyle from where he’s standing in front of him. “Uh huh,” he says slowly, after a moment.

“And I just think that, with a couple of key framing choices, we could really convey how the invading force is just the same as this so-called 'barbaric' culture before it's even made, you know, obvious…”

Roman stands, entirely unmoving, watching Kyle unpack all his plot ideas with gesticulating hands for two solid minutes before he holds up a hand.

“Stop,” Roman says only. “Just stop.”

“Right. _Your_ vision.” Kyle offers his hands askance as though to back away from initiative.

“No. It was all good. Why the fuck are you-” he waves an angry hand- “like this?”

Kyle frowns, his natural state of perpetual confusion shining through. “What do you mean?”

“You hate this shit.”

“What? No I don’t.”

“Yeah, you do. Every time I talk about science fiction, you’re like, ‘oh, okay, whatever!’, and it’s like… well it’s obvious you don’t care at all about it, so I don’t know why you’re sitting here in front of me pretending like you do.”

“I don’t sound like that, first of all. Second of all, don’t act like _I’m_ the fucking snob here.”

“I’m not a _snob_ -”

“Okay, you have ideas about what ‘proper’ sci fi is. I’m just a guy-”

“Yeah, because _proper_ science fiction has actual _science_ in it-”

“-who’s totally happy to sit down and watch a Star Trek or whatever-”

“-that’s not _snobbery_ , it’s the _literal definition of the genre_ -”

“-and you’re always putting me down for that, so if you’re wondering why-”

“-there’s no such thing as _’a Star Trek’_ , what do you even mean by that?”

“-I’m not super into talking sci fi with you, it’s because you’re the dick, not me.”

“If being _right_ makes me a dick, then sue me.”

“Listen,” Kyle says, and starts talking with his hands again. “My point is that this is a good story, and I want to be part of it. You want to stop hearing my ideas, fine. But you’re not gonna drop me from this role just because you think I don’t get it, because I do.”

Roman shakes his head disbelievingly. “Who said I even wanted to offer you this role?”

“Dude, you wrote it literally _for me_. It said right in the thing, ‘Must Be Kyle,’ with an arrow next to ‘Sun King’ and like five underlines.”

Roman had, apparently, missed that little detail as he was transcribing the script. “Well, I’m sober now, so…”

“Yeah. That’s your mistake. You were so much more fun to be around when you were stoned to shit.”

“Yeah, you would think so.”

“Fucking snobbery.” Kyle nods to the poster on the wall behind Roman. “And what is it with you and Repo Man? What the fuck is it about Repo Man?”

Roman rearranges the curtains of his hair. “You know what, asswipe, if you don’t get it now you never will.”

A silence falls of an unknown quantity.

“You want a beer or something?” Roman mumbles eventually.

“Yeah,” says Kyle. “I’ll have one. You having one?”

“Yeah,” says Roman begrudgingly, and moves into the kitchen a second later.

“This is a nice place,” Kyle half-shouts from the sofa.

“It’s a shit hole,” Roman counters. He sticks his face into the fridge and closes his eyes against it, letting the cold wash over his face. He feels weirdly hot. Then again, this is California.

“It’s not. My apartment’s a lot worse.”

“Well, that’s not surprising.” He lifts the caps off their beers and wanders back into the living room, handing one to Kyle before throwing himself in a nearby armchair. “It’s okay. My roommate’s never home.”

“Nice. Mine, like, lives in the bathroom. I have no fucking idea what he does in there. Jerks off? For three hours? I don’t think so. Leaves his pube trimmings all over the bathroom floor.”

“Christ. I did not need to know all that.”

“Sorry. I thought we were bonding.”

“Well, we weren’t.”

“Okay. Sorry.”

Roman lets the silence build; ignores Kyle as he sips at his beer and grabs something off the coffee table when the quiet gets awkward. Roman feels like he has to ask this before he goes forward, and yet he doesn’t want to sound the way he invariably will…

Oh, fuck it.

“What do… you like about it, exactly?”

Kyle blinks up at him from a book of Lovecraftian illustrations, about which he is, Roman is sure, entirely clueless. “About the script?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s a good plot,” Kyle says with a shrug and sincere nonchalance. “Says something about the human condition. I can dig that.”

“You can.”

“Yeah, man. Listen, I’ve read some of your other shit, and - no offense - it’s contrived to all hell. Stiff as a board, can’t get a feeling through.”

“Feelings? _Feelings?_ That’s what you took away from this script?”

“Well, like, not … per se. I just mean that it’s not bogged down by a thousand technical details. It’s got heart. It’s the only thing of yours I’ve read that’s remotely readable, honestly. There’s something human about it. That’s what I keep saying.”

“That it’s human.”

“Yeah.”

“My other scripts aren’t human?”

“Not really, no. All that shit about the computer consensus? Look, it’s good shit, but if you’re not telling a story about people then what’s the fucking point?”

“ _Terrorbird_ wasn’t about people?”

“ _Terrorbird_ was about a terrifying bird.” 

“No, it - how many fucking times do I have to tell you? It’s not that fucking simple-”

“I’m saying it was a movie about a problem. People moved underground, the problem was solved. This is a movie about war. That’s really fucking human.”

Roman considers this, sulkingly, peeling at the label of his beer. “Not necessarily,” he mutters eventually. “Other species go to war-”

“Yeah, okay, whatever. Point is, you wrote a good story, about people, that people will like. So that’s why I like it. What else do you want from me?”

Roman thinks about this longer than he should. “Nothing,” he says eventually.

“Okay,” Kyle says. “Can I be the Sun King?”

“Yeah, whatever,” Roman says.

Kyle gives Roman a quiet smile, and Roman, after several moments of trying to avoid returning the gesture, ultimately feels his lips pulling tightly back against his will.

“We have to get the movie greenlit first,” he tells Kyle.

“I guess,” says Kyle, and laughs, bringing his beer to his mouth. “A small obstacle.”

“Yeah,” Roman agrees, and _does not_ watch Kyle’s lips seal around the lip of the bottle. “That’s the bitch of it, all right.”

  


  


In the end, the movie does get greenlit.

Kyle turns out to be an excellent creative partner, against all odds. He personifies exactly everything the Sun King himself is about: he’s personable, easy to talk to, and dishes deflecting bullshit with an ease that Roman has never really noticed before. He feels like he’s starting to understand what Kyle is about by the time they’re sitting in front of the exec that actually tells him they have the funding to start shooting based on the shitty scene the two of them put together in their spare time-

At least until, outside the studio, Kyle kisses him.

They’d been jumping around, whooping and swearing like they couldn’t actually fucking believe this was happening - and Roman couldn’t, honestly, who the _fuck_ thought that all he had to do was get stupidly fucking high to get a movie going. But then Kyle lands from a jump, spins to look at Roman, and kisses the fuck out of him before he knows what’s happening.

Roman’s hands bunch in Kyle’s shirt; pull him in closer; push him away; and then slap Kyle, hard, in both ears at once.

“Ow!” Kyle’s hands fly up to protect his head from further damage. “What the fuck was that for!”

“What the fuck was _that_ for?”

“Bro - we’re getting a _movie_ made!”

“So you fucking _kiss_ me? You _ass_ hole!” Roman wipes the spit off his mouth with the back of his hand, but then he looks at it forlornly, as though regretting he’d done it. “Jesus Christ! Are you out of your mind?”

“Okay! I misread the moment!”

“You _misread_ the-”

“Roman, we get to quit our jobs! No more fucking catering! You’re producing a movie; I’m an actual fucking actor! Maybe we’ll be out on our asses again in eight months, but who the fuck _cares_! Roman!!” Kyle grabs Roman by the shirt again, and Roman winds his fingers tightly around Kyle’s wrists - but does not wrench him off. “We have finally fucking _made_ it!”

And with Kyle grinning at him like that, his cheeks flushed, with his perfect teeth and his stupid blue eyes, Roman thinks maybe kissing hadn’t been a totally ridiculous response to this situation at all.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” Roman says; but then he kisses Kyle’s stupid pink lips, instead of saying more.

“If you say so,” Kyle says, pressing his forehead against Roman's when they break away; and then he grinningly hooks an arm around Roman’s neck as they stride across the parking lot toward his car. “Let’s go get fucked up and write another movie. Or... you know. We could fuck. Whatever you usually do to celebrate.”

Roman, once again blushing under Kyle’s fucking positive attention like he’s a goddamned teenager, allows himself a moment of shyness in which to adjust his glasses before he says: “Well, the night is young.”

And Roman decides that accidentally writing a movie about Kyle might’ve been the smartest thing he could’ve ever done while incredibly, unfathomably high.


End file.
